http://research.microsoft.com/~dan/mysong/

omg..

haha!

I like it.

Part of the fun of music is writing your own stuff.. and I can't see how a computer will ever be able to compare to doing it yourself. The songs seem like they'd all be too generic.

Read the text on that site... it says exactly that.

It's really just yet another cheap way to make money.



There's a difference between 'writing a song' and 'writing a good song', everybody can 'write a song'. There's really little to no experience required for that, just grab microphone and start recording whatever you think of. You don't even need to write down your 'song' in notes..



Aren't most (popular) songs very generic anyways? There's a lot of stuff that's nearly an exact copy of some other song.

that's how harmony works. there are plenty ways of arranging chords, but not unlimited. that's where polyphony and atonal combinations find their way into the song and here is the difference between a song and a good song.

and of course there are so much more things than chords for accompaniment. it's actually not hard to write such a prog. all you need is some samples, an engine which can render them into different pitches and a fast fourier transformation for the melody to gather the most probable chords which fit to the voice.

Exactly, but harmony can't be calculated, right?

i thought it could. basically it's all about different music theories, one of them is the classical cadence which is utilized here (tonic subdominant dominant tonic) and which can be expanded further.

Well, yes, but if you do it like that it's no wonder you won't generate any 'original' music.